Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Getaway Blu-ray Movie Review

A head-on collision with terrible...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 18, 2013

And the non-prize for Worst Film of 2013 goes to... no contest, no surprise: Courtney Solomon's Getaway! Starring an leagues-above-his-pay-grade Ethan Hawke, a fresh-off-the-set-of-Spring Breakers Selena Gomez, and Jon Voight's bulging eyes. How exactly Getaway made it off the studio lot is a mystery; why anyone thought to greenlight it even more so. Its 21-car pileup script is an underdeveloped mess. Its 5-Hour Energy Drink performances are as irritating as its laughably high-strung dialogue. Its bleary cinematography amounts to minimalism gone horribly, horribly wrong, and that's being kind. Its story and plotting implausible and mindless. I swore long ago to do my all to come up with something -- anything -- positive about any and every movie I review. Getaway admittedly isn't the first time I've broken that vow, and it won't be the last. Sometimes, though, a film is so positively awful, so deliriously dismal that the only remotely good thing about it is the rolling of the end credits.

The Kid: "No! Please don't, don't, don't!" Magna: "Yep, yep, yep... hold on!"

Ex-racer Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) is on the move, and the clock is ticking. It seems his wife (a briefly glimpsed Rebecca Budig) was kidnapped by a man known only as The Voice (Jon Voight), who's directing Magna's every step via phone in a Shelby Mustang wired with multiple cameras and listening devices. If Brent follows The Voice's every command, his wife lives. If he doesn't? Things won't go so well for Mrs. Magna. Matters are soon complicated by The Kid (Selena Gomez), a feisty young carjacker who gets pulled into The Voice's sick game. (Brent is initially ordered to kill her, but refuses. Does his wife die? No! Instead, The Voice essentially says, gotcha! That's what you should have done! So much for rule #1 of "Do What I Say or Lose Your Loved Ones.") As the night blazes on, Brent leads the police on a high speed chase down the streets of Stupid, veering down alley after alley of Idiotic.

Getaway is noisy and dull. And worse, dim-witted. The cops are brainless, faceless action-movie fodder; the villain apparently a long lost member of the Gruber family; our hero a morally inept do-gooder, as unlikable and shout-y as he is thinly realized and poorly conceived. The chase scenes, meanwhile, are laughably bad, heaping improbably sharp turns atop ludicrously successful stunts (and one staircase descent) to increasingly disappointing ends. Whereas the Fast & Furious franchise at least digs deep into its bag of Big Dumb Fun, Getaway takes itself much too seriously, wasting any talent on screen with a misguided, mismanaged, incoherently edited string of narrow misses; near-death encounters that darkly leave one hoping the next scene will involve Hawke and Gomez being ejected from the Shelby, followed by a quick -- and permanent -- cut to black. The Voice wins! What else is on?

If there were some redeeming value to Getaway, I'd latch on. As is, the only questions I keep coming back to involve the actors. How did Hawke get roped into such a misfire? Why did Gomez, inexperienced or no, even entertain the script? Who was tasked with getting Voight drunk enough to sign on? Granted, none of their IMDB pages are spotless. But Solomon's track record didn't throw up any warning signs? No of their agents advised caution? Is Solomon really so convincing that the film, at any stage in its development, sounded like anything more than a mangled direct-to-video crash waiting to happen? Already a box office bomb and a frontrunner in this year's Razzies, watch for Hawke, Gomez and Voight to quietly begin pretending Getaway doesn't exist. I'm going to do the same.

Getaway Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Though largely a product of its Canon H264 digital HD cameras and ungodly shaky-cam photography (thus the decent video score), Getaway's 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation is, subjectively, a bit of a wreck. Sometimes severe macroblocking, at-times dusty black levels, unruly contrast, banding, unwieldy noise, crush, aliasing, ringing inconsistent clarity and other eyesores litter the image (minor as many instances may be), making it difficult to differentiate between inherent source-based issues and possible encoding mishaps. Not that any distinction would really help. Presumably, this is the film as was intended. Many a shot and scene fares quite nicely, with crisp detailing, clean edge definition, well-saturated colors, lifelike skintones and deep, absorbing shadows. Unfortunately, these shots become the exception rather than the rule the moment Brent's start-and-stop high-octane chases resume; something that would be much easier to endure if there was an overwhelming aesthetic or artistic benefit (a la 28 Days Later). But down that path lies a particularly troublesome bias, and I wrestled with my final video score for some time. Let the uninformed buyer beware; those now in the know, consider yourselves duly warned.

Getaway Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I didn't enjoy Getaway's garish, overloud DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track either, but again, so goes the film. LFE output is perhaps the highlight of the entire presentation, with enough power under the hood to bring the chase sequences roaring to some semblance of life. The rear speakers are a bit less reliable but no less engaging, with several immersive stretches that sell the illusion of the vehicular chaos. Dialogue is front and center all the while, with relatively clear, well-prioritized voices and plenty of wild in-car effects peppering the action. It's all mind-numbingly noisy, of course, with little in the way of nuance or a deft touch. But anyone who enjoys the film will most certainly lap up every crash, smash and throaty throttle Solomon tosses fans' way.

Getaway Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray release of Getaway offers five HD mini-featurettes -- "Crash Cams," "Destroying a Custom Shelby," "The Train Station," "Metal and Asphalt" and "Selena Gomez" -- but each one clocks in at a few seconds over a minute a piece, making for a strangely abbreviated six-minute supplemental package.

Getaway Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Getaway is hands down the worst movie I've sat through in 2013. Maybe even in the last few years. It reaches for memorability, but comes up so short it will only be remembered for being so awful. I'm sure someone, somewhere will have a blast with it, and I'm happy you're out there. It means a film like this will find an audience, no matter how small, and at least lend some value to its existence. Thankfully, Warner's Blu-ray will please the fans Solomon's misfire assembles. Its video presentation isn't pretty but it's fairly faithful and its DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track delivers high-octane thrills. Its supplemental package is a six-minute wash, but so it goes with box office bombs. I'd recommend renting this one if you can't resist seeing for yourself. Keep that hard-earned cash in your pocket until you know for sure whether Getaway's brand of brainlessness is to your liking.